There was, indeed, a country

“Human memory awakens and extinguishes at will. It dulls and sharpens actions, enlarges and shrinks those who perform them. It humbles and exalts as it desires. When summoned, it slips away, and when it returns, it will do so at the time and place that suits it. It recognises no chief, no overseer, no classifier, no ruler. Stories mix and mingle, facts sprout new shoots.”-Meir Shalev, a Russian writer

I have just finished reading Prof. Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra. Since the publication of the memoir last year to a welter of controversy over what the writer wrote or failed to write, I have declined to enter the fray because I didn’t want to fall into the same line of thought that I always accuse people of – that is judging a book only by its cover or blurb.

Although I got the book almost as soon as it was off the press in Nigeria, but I never got to read it until recently because I already had some books lined up for reading before its publication. However, I read the excerpt published in The Guardian of London which led to the hail of controversy that subsequently made the book become such a hot cake that it instantly became the first book in Nigeria, at least to my knowledge, which though not a recommended text was pirated in the first few weeks of its publication. In Lagos traffic today the pirated copy is the most hawked and available book apart from the ubiquitous ‘pure water’.

Although many reviews of the book have been written both in local and international newspapers, I feel that as a reader and as someone who grew up reading the respected writer and regarding him as a role model and no doubt one of the early influences that made me chose my line of career, the book under consideration falls short of what he has, for me, stood for in all his other books, most especially The Problem with Nigeria.

There is no doubt that Nigeria is a country in search of heroes and role models and intellectuals such as Achebe and the rest of them should at the twilight of their lives look for things that would unite rather than further divide their country of birth.

In reading There was a Country, I came away with the impression that despite the fact that the civil war ended over four decades ago, people like the much-respected Achebe still, feel the war against his people was still on. This siege mentality must stop and those in a better position to stop it are the Achebes of this world. But if people like him still feel the way he wrote about it in the book, then we have a long way to go.

I was barely five or so when the war started and I was living in the north then, and though it was not the centre of the war I can, however, attest to it that the pogrom was real and those not killed there died while running back to the East just as it has been happening of recent with the incessant ethno-religious crises that have gripped the North in recent past.

However, as the Yoruba say, “if you don’t forget yesterday’s shortcomings you will never get one to play with.” It is high time we put the war behind us and think more of how to move beyond our present challenges. The unfortunate civil war has become a sort of industry for many who use it as an excuse to be aggressive and ride roughshod over others and feel sidelined (the siege mentality).

I was born in the North and lived and schooled there for over three decades, I have also lived in the East and now live in the West. so if anything, I can claim to know Nigeria and Nigerians as much as I know the back of my hand, if you permit the cliché.

There are so many claims and assertions in There was a Country, which should not have come from a writer with the standing of Achebe. Take for instance this, “There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s action after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatise that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be integrated into Nigeria, one of the reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.”

I beg to differ. What I can deduce from this claim by this respected writer is that only the Igbo hold the key to the development of this country! I am afraid; it is this kind of thinking and frame of mind that is holding our country down and responsible for our predicament. This is ethnic supremacy and nonsensical dismissal of other ethnic groups as backward and only meant to be gatemen, gardeners and cooks.

That is not all; the respected writer believes the decision by the federal government to ban the importation of stockfish and second hand clothes, “two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.” How can the use of second hand clothes and consumption of stockfish achieve this? Come on we must grow up.

By my own reading, one of the major pitfalls of the book is that the writer with the role he played as an envoy for the late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu to the former President of Senegal who himself was a distinguished poet and writer, shows that he (Achebe) was a close ally of the late Ojukwu, and based on this premise, a reader like me expected that he should give us a more accurate and detailed portrait of the late Biafran leader.

But what do we have? Just passing comments that in no way pointed to the mind of the chief planner and executioner of the plan to take his part of Nigeria out of the federation.

In this memoir at least, we know where the writer stands where the issue of the war, the federation known as Nigeria, General Yakubu Gowon and most especially the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo are concerned, and to some extent, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. But what does he think of the late Ojukwu? He was dodgy and unclear where the late Biafran leader was concerned. This is not the Achebe I grew up to know and admire. Many things were left unsaid while some of those things said were done with a forked tongue.

I like yr idealogy but i think the papa should be free to air his thought and feelings,through the best medium that suits him.

Dele

I strongly concur with you, my man. I am also an avid reader of papa Achebe’s and I always hold him in high esteem. Dejectedly, I could not believe my eyes when I read ‘There was a Country’. The book is absolutely a parochial and subjective framework of thought about our country, Nigeria. It is so disappointing that such an ill conceived memoir is from our cherished writer. It shows that very few of us are actualy patriotic Nigerians with national interests. It’s so painful.

Emm

Well, the message have been passed to the people it was meant for. Just like achebe said, if you dont know where the rain startd to beat you you wil not no where it stop. Pls yorubas should stop asking us to forget abou the war. Enough is enough. You cannot beat a child and ask him or her not to cry, is it possible. That book was really an eye opener to the igbos. When chinua achebe or the lgbos sneeze the rest of the country catch cold.

I do not understand your own arguement on this issue.You said you were 5 yrs during the war.So how then u know that ojukwu was the chief planner and executioner,your father told u lies concerning biafran war,go and do ur research well for u to know when and how Ojukwu came into the war,if i may help you,a group ask Ojukwu to declare & lead.So go and find out who’re those group of people.

Raymond

Write your own memoir of the war make we read now….are u justifing the actions of Gowon and Awolowo?
Are u blind to the continous religious slavery and victimization of other tribes expectially the earterners?
Gold coting history does not make the future bling.

Eddy

I have just finished reading the book myself. I do not see anything wrong with what Achebe wrote. My impression is that he is still very bitter about the events that led to the war, the way the war was prosecuted by the then federal govt, and finally how the integration was carried out. He believes that the issue of the pogrom was not properly addressed. He is entitled to his views. We should respect it. I accept and agree with him that there is a problem with our recruitment process at all level – lack of a transparent, merit-driven process – which is not allowing the country to move forward as it should have.